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\_From a Letter to The Independent, hy M. D. Conway. \ 



On Tuesday afternoon Father Hyacinthe made his first public 
appearance in London. His reputation as a bold Catholic reformer, 
and the fact that the proceeds were to benefit the distressed peas- 
antry of France, combined to bring an enormous crowd to the doors 
■of the Queen's Concert Rooms, Hanover Square, of which hardly 
one-third could gain admission. * * * Before them arose the 
plain French gentleman, about whom no scrap of dress nor remnant 
of tonsure remained to mark that he had ever been a Carmelite 
friar, a man of about fifty years, with a square, open face, upon 
which also j^ast and passing experiences \zA left strong inscriptions. 
His theme was that which fate had assigned him : France, Germany, 
the War. And as he rose, and for some breathless moments silently 
cast his searching glance around the appealing faces before him, all 
felt how overwhelmed he was by the awfulness of that theme. 
Then, with a low, almost tremulous voice, he speaks in that ndivc 
French of which he is the finest oratorical master since Bossuet ; 
his first words seeming like the simple plaintive pleading of a child. 
(What art can equal artlessness ! ) It was but a few sentences about 
the sore calamity of which for the last five months Europe has been 
a witness, the yearnings of every friend of humanity that the dread- 
ful tragedy should end, and the anxious questioning of good men 
as to what could hasten the return of peace. A commonplace 
enough beginning for a great orator, as one reads it on paper ; but 
as they came from the preacher's stricken heart, the voices of all who 
ever cried implora pace, of all who ever prayed " Give peace in our 
time, Lord," were in the few faltering words. As he p)roceeded, 
it was plain to see that Father Hyacinthe had not come to prophesy 
smooth things, nor to tell the French that they were the most in- 
jured innocents and the Germans the greatest brutes in the world. 
If he had been brought here to curse the hosts of Germany, he did 
not do it. He paid a high tribute to Germany — to its " extraordinary, 
generous seeking for truth," its vast contributions to learning and 
civilization ; and pronounced the German universities, " even 



VI. 

though he stood in England," the best in the world. He regarded 
with honor the aspirations of Germany for unity, and launched a 
bitter rebuke against that "base envy" which, conjoined with ig- 
norance of Germany, had led France to a criminal aggression upon 
that country. He uttered an impressive warning to Germany, 
that, if she should now take up the 7v3^e which France had dropped; 
if, with a similar blindness and injustice, she should attempt simi- 
larly to rebuild in Europe the fabric of Cgesarism which belonged 
to ancient Eome, she would reach her Sedan also. . The j)assage in 
which this was expressed was one of marvelous power, and excited 
loud cheers and cries of hravo ; but the orator did not proceed to 
sympathize with all the prejudices of his hearers in this matter. 
He emj)hatically declared that the transfer of Alsace and Lorraine 
was a secondary question. He confessed his ignorance about the 
condition and feeling of those two provinces and that of his coun- 
trymen ; and, while hoping that they might remain French, pro- 
tested against the theory that their loss would impair the greatness 
or mar the future of France. I do not remember ever to have wit- 
nessed a more impressive instance of the power of an orator than 
in the force with which Father Hyacinthe put his statement before 
an audience to whom it was unwelcome. He recalled the fact 
that once nearly every Englishman thought that it was necessary 
to hold Calais as a pistol at the head of France ; and Q,iieen Mary 
said that when she died the name of that town would be found en- 
graved upon her heart. Yet what Englishman now wished for 
Calais? Not only, he maintained, would the loss of Alsace and ■ 
Lorraine not reduce France to a secondary rank ; but that loss 
could not prevent the alliance between the French and German 
people which was inevitable. * * * * ^ -^ 

What he said about " race " was a symphony upon Manzoni's 

theme : 

'• All made in the likeness of the One, 
All children of one ransom, 
In whatever hour, in whatever part of the earth 
We draw this vital air, 

We are brothers ; we must be bound by one compact. 
Accursed be he who infringes it. 
Who raises himself upon the weak Avho weep, 
Who saddens an immortal spirit." 

>i< ^ ;|; * * * * 

As the speaker went on in this strain, he drew all hearts upward 
to his thought ; and from his hight we saw, beyond the blood- 
stained foreground, where race clashed with race, the peaceful for- 



VII 



mation of ethnical unities and national unities — Sclavonic, Scandi- 
navian, German, Latin, American — each a strength added to all, 
separated, indeed, but only as the fingers of the hand are separa- 
ted, that the common end and need of all may be more completelv 
grasped. 

So grand were the tones, so lofty the manner of the speaker, as 
he urged these views, that it was as if we listened to the voice of 
Destiny. Then he rose to the hight of prophecy, and saw two new 
nations emerging from this thick darkness — a new Germany and a 
new France. German}'- in her unity would never be content with 
the threadbare regime of the past ; she would attain a new political 
organization, a body corresponding to her intellectual and moral 
soul ; she would become a powerful focus of civilization in the heart 
of Europe — pacific and liberal. Then he repeated that fearful pic- 
ture of the corruption to which France had been reduced under the 
Second Empire, which he had uttered in Notre Dame : " Luxurv is 
eating into the entrails of this nation ; whilst in the midst of 
this growing decay, courtesans are lifting their proud heads like 
worms on the corpse that is nourishing them." And he said now, 
as in that church : " The enemy at our gates, our honor insulted, 
our independence menaced — if this be requisite to force us from 
those who are ruining us, God will accomplish this, because he loves 
us and wishes to save us in spite of ourselves. Come forth from the 
scabbard, sword of the Lord and of France ; do thv work, do it 
quickly, and do it completely ! "' As the orator said these words, 
his frame trembled with emotion, his hand rose in the air, his fin- 
gers clutching as it were for an invisible weapon. Before him the 
heads of hundreds bowed down, cheeks were crimsoned, eyes were 
wet. Then above that lowly shame he raised the France that was 
to be , the France restored to herself, fulfilling patiently the prom- 
ises so often vowed in revolutions, now renewed because re23resen- 
tative of her deepest heart, and sure to come to pass ; the France 
which. Catholic though she was, had produced Bossuet, Descartes, 
Pascal, Calvin — inquirei's, thinkers, martyrs of freedom — and which 
had still the power to raise the noble banner of those ancestors over 
the ruins of the reign of courtesans and tyrants. 

During this great outburst Father Hyacinthe paused once ; and, 
as if speaking to himself, said : " My poor country ! " He then 
paused ; the crowd Avas still. It was a moment when we who were 
not French almost felt as if we were intruders ; we felt that in that 
silent minute, heart was meeting heart, and the souls of the heavv- 



VIII 

laden refugees were mingling tlieir tears under a common grief with 
which no stranger could intermeddle. The gloom of the murky 
London twilight had already fallen upon the company, and from 
the gathering darkness the sorrowful and terribly severe words had 
come from an almost hidden speaker, testifying to the moral degra- 
dation of France, until all words sank into those three : " My poor 
country ! " 

Just then the lights flamed out ; the score of chandeliers, -shaped 
like circular constellations, darted out their jets of flame. Where 
a moment before ail had been gloom, there now shone on wall and 
ceiling the brilliant frescoed forms of Graces and Muses, as if they 
had started from aerial sj)heres to hail the prophet of their darling 
France, as above the dreary picture of her fallen estate he drew her 
risen from her ashes, redeemed, transfigured. 

London, Dec. 22d, 1870. 



FKANCE AND GERMANY. 



For nearly live months, Europe has been witnessinj^; 
the most formidable collision of modern times ; and every 
true friend of humanity, every earnest disciple of tlie 
Govspel is anxiously asking " what can I do to hasten the 
return of peace?" Mighty as are the triumphs of ma- 
terial force, they are still subordinate to moral force ; and 
thus it is that, in the words of our Holy Scriptures, the 
kingdom of this world belongs, in the grand result, to 
God and to his Christ. Each of us is the depositary of a, 
part of this moral force. When it lays siege to God's 
righteousness,* it is called prayer ; when it does battle 
with the unrighteousness of man, it is called opinion ; in 
either case it has power to remove mountains. At tliis 
moment, my appeal is to opinion ; and nowhere could I 
better address myself to it than on English soil. Failing 
to prevent this lamentable war, against which she protes- 
ted from the beginning with all the force of an honest 
conscience and an enlightened statesmanship, England 
has wrought prodigies of devotion- to abate its horrors. 
The wounded of the two armies, the peasants of the rav- 
aged provinces, have learned what may l^e achieved by the 
charity of a great nation. But, gentlemen, your task is 
not yet done. The hour has come for your country t<:» 
make its high and impartial reason felt, more potently 
yet, in the counsels in which peace shall be decided. 

I leave to statesmen and warriors the task of settling 

*The Kingdom of God suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. 
— Matth. XI, 12. 



10 

the conditions wliicli shall make this peace a lasting one. 
I mean to avoid all those matters which have only too 
much irritated and aggravated the dispute. It is for vul- 
gar and mischievous minds to handle questions by the 
sides which divide, in such wise as to retard the settle- 
ment of them, if, even, they do not render it altogether im- 
possible. Let us leave them to their noisy and useless 
wranglings, and for our part let us rise toward better re- 
gions, toward that land "which the lion's whelps have not 
trodden, and the vulture's eye hath not seen." "^ 

Is there any real matter at issue between France and 

■ Germany in one of these conflicts the character of which 
is the more terrible, and their duration the more protrac- 
ted, by so much as the causes of them lie the deeper ? 
Such is the question which I propose to treat, looking upon 
it from the double point of view of the antagonism of 

■ races, and the antagonism of religions. 

I. 

And first, the antagonism of races. It has been said : 
'" this war is no ordinary war between states ; two races 
are disputing between themselves the empire of Europe — 
'the Latin race by the sword of France, the Germanic 
race by that of Prussia. It is the decisive struggle of 
two civilizations, the final shock of two worlds in col- 
lision ! " 

I freely acknowledge that the idea of race is not with- 
out its importance and its rights in history. It is con- 
nected with another idea, that of family, which is the 
principle at once of all diversity and of all unity among 
men. The race is the family on a larger scale. It is pa- 

* Job xxviii, 7, 8. 



11 

ternity raised to tlie highest power, creating a new type 
of human nature, a characteristic form both of physical 
and of moral life, and transmitting them throuo-li the 
generations by the enduring plastic influence of the same 
l^lood and the same language. It is nothing strange, 
then, tliat a strongly marked race should feel itself to be 
a sort of mankinci within mankind. This profound in- 
stinct has been approved, or rather, has been hallowed by 
(rod himself, who, when he would intervene personally 
upon the earth, has, (if I might venture the expression) 
associated his own destinies with the destinies of a family 
and a race — the family of Abraham, the race of Israel. 

And yet here, as everywhere, we find the two opposite 
conceptions — the ancient idea and the modern — the pagan 
idea and the Christian. 

According to the ancient view, the race is not only dis- 
tinct, it is isolated. It believes itself to be of higher 
origin, and made for higher destinies. All blood but its 
own is impure, and it loathes the idea of being mingled 
with it. Every language but its own is barbarous, and 
sounds to its ear like a mere brute gibberish. It carries 
this spirit of separation even into those things which are 
most fitted to unite — into relig-ion and morals. It recop;- 
nizes no duties save towards its own members ; it wor- 
ships gods that are the foes of every nation but itself, and 
in the name of heaven as well as of earth, it lives in a 
state of war with the whole world. Evidently, the object 
pursued by the race, until it learns to rise above this 
gross conception, can be nothing but the extermination or 
the enslavement of the other races. 

How different that new idea, dimly descried in the fu- 
ture by the Hebrew prophets, and, now and then, even by 



12 

the sages of India and Greece and Rome, but which Jesus 
Christ alone was able effectually to introduce into the 
world ! By this, the races lose nothing of their impor- 
tance. The gospel comes not to destroy but to fulfill. 
They retain their physiognomy,, their distinctive lineage 
and mission, but they are no longer enemies nor even 
strangers. They are reconciled, in the discovery of their 
long-forgotten mutual kindred. Henceforth there is some- 
thing more than men or nations ; there is mankind, feel- 
ing itself to be one, throughout the length and breadth of 
the world, by the blood of Adam flowing in its veins, and 
by the Spirit of Christ breathing in its soul. 

I know that- recent science has raised certain doubts on 
the unity of our origin ; and the question may arise 
whether, since science has brought us to a more just inter- 
pretation of the Bible on the subject of the antiquity of 
our planet and even of our race, it is not some day to 
bring us to a new explanation of the creation of our first 
parents. For my part, I do not believe that this is to 
be ; but if I do not believe it, neither do I dread it. The 
oneness of our race is far less in the heart of Adam than 
in the heart of God — in that " tender mercy " of our cre- 
ating and redeeming God of which the Gospel sings, 
" whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited us."* 
Yes : even if there were different physical sources of our 
blood ; even if mankind were sprung from more than a 
single pair ; even if the Adam and Eve of the Bible were 
but. the type of many historic or rather pre-historic Adams 
and Eves, neither my religious faith, nor my humanitari- 
an faith would thereby be shaken. It would still and for- 
ever be true that one Creator had bowed himself over the 

"-■■Luke 1, 78. 



13 

primeval clay, to quicken us with the divine breath, tliat 
one Redeemer had restored us all to the imao-e and like- 
ness which we all in common had received and lost. 
Ipsius enim et genus sumus, as Saint Paul says : " for we 
are also of his race ! "* 

Having then but one Father, in one God, the various 
races of man are called to consider themselves as the fra- 
ternal branches of one family, and to draAV nigh to each 
other in the observance of the same laws of justice and 
love, in the practice of the same worship, the adoration 
of the Father in spirit and in truth. The true type of 
their destiny is found, not now in the multitude of those 
fields of battle on which they were wont to slay each 
other in the name of their false gods, but in the one city 
and the one temple — in that mystical Zion whither, gath- 
ering from all the ends of the earth, they shall go up 
nation by nation, to rejoin Israel, the first-born nation of 
Jehovah. 

Tell me no more, then, of the antagonism of races. Speak- 
ing as a Christian man to Christians, I answer you with 
the words of Saint Paul : " By revelation he has made 
known to us the mystery which in other ages was not 
inade known unto the sons of men, that the nations should 
be joint-heirs, and parts of one and the same body, and 
partakers of God's promise in Christ Jesus by the Gospel. "f 

Apply these principles to the question before us. If 
there is opposition between the pretensions of Germany 
and those of France, it is because these pretensions are un- 
just. There is no opposition, there can be none, between the 
real interests of two Christian nations. These interests, if 
we leave out of view certain side-questions, the importance 

* Acts xvii, 38. f Ephesians, iii, 3, 6. 



14 

of wliich is sometimes exaggerated, may be summed up, 
for substance, in these words ; the Unity of Germany, and 
the Integrity of France. INFow, in the first place I declare 
that France would have no reason to look upon the estab- 
lishment of Grerman unity as a misfortune for herself. I 
make bold to say this, notwithstanding the prejudices of a 
part of my fellow-countrymen, notwithstanding the author- 
ity of eminent men whose shrewd and sound judgment on 
so many other points I hold in high respect. I am the more 
bold herein, as this policy is for me no makeshift of the 
hour. I had no sympathy with the " patriotic anguish "* 
which followed upon Sadowa, and in the pulpit of Notre Dame 
at Paris, where it fell to me to touch upon these questions 
at those lofty summits at which they themselves touch 
upon morals and religion, I put forth every effort to bring 
my country to recognize in the neighbor countries not dan- 
gerous competitors, but peaceful rivals, natural allies, and 
in many respects useful models. f I claim, then, that France 
had no occasion for agitation at the establishment at her 
doors of a first-class political and military power, and that 
she ought not to have looked upon the unity of Germany 
either as a humiliation or as a menace. 

It is no humiliation. For it is with nations as with in- 
dividuals : when they are indeed great — and such is France 
— they have no need to belittle everything about them in 
order to seem great. The real elements of a nation's great- 
ness are Avithin itself, in the regular and progressive devel- 
opment of its institutions, in the increase of its material 

* An expression of M. Roulier, uttered in the Legislative Body, March 16th, 
1867: " This unlikely and unexpected event [the battle of Sadowa] filled the 
hearts of all men of the government -wHIl patriotic anguish.''' Translatok's 

JSTOTE. 

t Notre Dame Conferences on the Family and on Christianity and Ci'dl 
Society 1866 and 1867. PuWished by G. P. Putnam & Sons, New York, 1870 



15 

prosperity, and, still more, of its intellectual an<l moi-al 
wealth. The greatness whieh is sought abi-oad. 1 )y arrogant 
interventions in the afiairs of others, is as illusory as it is 
criminal. It is the policy of envy ; and of all policies there 
is none more unworthy of the gloiious history and of the 
heroic soul of France ! 

Neither is the unity of Germany a mcriact'. Had 
France but spoken in tliat tone winch is no less persuasive 
on the lips of a nation than on those of an indiviilual — 
had she declared her determination to respect the liberty of 
Grermanyin everything that concerned its internal organi- 
zation ; had she repudiated all desire of conquest of those 
Rhenish provinces which have no more wish to be French 
than Alsace and Lorraine have, at this hour, to be German ; 
had she refused to reach out a hand towards that sacred 
river, over whose waters float the historic and legendary 
traditions of the German people ; — then France would not 
have had to dread a German invasion, or, in case of that 
impossible aggression, would have had all Europe on 
her side. 

So then it was no more a matter of interest than of right 
for us to oppose the unity of Germany. I do not fear to 
add that our interest was rather to encourage it. There 
are some events against which no opposition can prevail, 
seeing that they are in the nature of things. The aspiration 
of a whole people demand them ; the logical development 
— I might say the fated development — of its history leads 
to them ; they seem to it like the necessary condition of 
the fulfilment of its providential destiny. An intelligent 
statesmanship forecasts events like these, and far from put- 
ting in their way impotent obstacles, which in the long run 
would only work its own harm, it lends them a generous 



16 

and sagacious aid by wliicli it turns them to its own advan- 
tage. The imperial government at the outset fully under- 
stood this ; and I am glad, on this point, to do it that 
justice which has been so long withheld from it. It did 
not allow itself to be frightened by those two bugbears that 
have scared France out of her wits — the unity of Italy 
and the unity of Germany. It unfurled on the fields of 
Magenta and Solferino that flag of which the Emperor so 
justly said : " it is preceded by a great cause, and followed 
by a great people ; " and after that thunderbolt of a cam- 
paign of 1866, it affirmed in a circular which is still famous, 
the calmness with which France looked upon the establish- 
ment of a new order of things in Europe. Unhappijy the 
Empire became blinded by the passion of personal govern- 
ment. It never understood that which constitutes the 
glory and tranquility of your noble country— the loyal al- 
liance between the throne and liberty — and therefore it 
was, that, having resolved to resist at every cost, in its in- 
ternal policy, the real public opinion that was urging it 
towards liberty, it felt forced to yield, in its foreign policy, 
even to the most unwarranted exactions of an opinion 
which was not that of the country. Towards Italy, and 
still more towards Prussia, it assumed that attitude of dis- 
trust and menace which made enemies for it where it had 
once had allies, and which plunged it at last into that gulf 
into which it has dragged us along with it. 

You see, gentlemen, that what opposed the unity of Ger- 
many was not the real interest of Prance, but the prejudices 
of a factitious public opinion, the passions of a false na- 
tional honor, set in operation by the most detestable calcu- 
lations of a dynastic ambition. 

On the other hand, Germany had no more interest in 
attacking the integrity of Prance, than France had in pre- 



17- 

venting the unity of Germany. All that I have been 
saying against the fatal policy that has brought us to 
Sedan holds good against the not less blind nor less guilty 
policy which Germany has been following from that time 
onward. The Emperor Napoleon has vanished in the storm 
which he had so madly conjured up. His soldiers, worthy 
of a better fate, but betraj^'ed by fortune, are fellow-cap- 
tives with him. It is the nation that is left, alone and 
almost disarmed, to face this deluge of fire and lead — yes, 
the nation, with that capital, which belongs not only to 
France but to Europe, home of art and science, too often, 
also, of luxury and pleasure, but turned now into an im- 
pregiiable citadel, whose every citizen is a soldier, I had 
almost said, a hero — the nation, with its homes transformed 
to hospitals, where every woman becomes a Sister of 
Charity, while the priests follow the husbands and sons to 
the battle-field to pray with them, — if need be, to die 
with them ! Ah, gentlemen, this abuse of victory against 
such a nation, this want of respect and pity for woes un- 
matched in history, this relentless prosecution of our poli- 
tical annihilation, is it not a course as wanting in gene- 
rosity as in equity ? But more than this, considered as a 
policy, it is wanting in forecast. The annihilation oi". 
France cannot be anything more than temporary.. The 
greatness of Prussia dates not from Sadowa, but from 
Jena ; its disasters were the beginning of its regeneration. 
Even so a new France shall date from Sedan,: — shall spring 
to birth, if it must needs be, from the ashes of Paris. I have 
not a doubt of it.. I only fear lest by Prussia's own fault, 
this France should have but one sole passion — hatred, but 
one sole aim — vengeance ! Ah ! the most fearful spectacles 
of war are not always on the battle-field ! I have met 



18 

with them hy the fireside. I have seen French mothers, m 
the transports of their patriotism, hugging their babies to 
their bosoms, and telHng them in tones to make one shudder, 
" Child, hate the Prussians !" A people nursed in sen- 
timents like that is a terri ble neighbor. The day might come 
when the new German Empire would find this out. At all 
events, war would become endemic on the continent, and 
the second half of this century, which seemed called to in- 
augurate the era of peace, would go out amid bloodier 
struggles and more fatal convulsions than those which 
marked its entrance. Germany, at the center, I might 
say at the heart, of Europe, instead of a new focus of 
civilization,, would become a focus of barbarism. Eaith- 
less to its true vocation^ — to be pre-eminently an intellec- 
tual, peaceful, liberal power — it would become a prey 
to the worst of despotisms— military despotism. It 
would inoculate itself with the poison which it has extin- 
guished in our veins, and instead of reviving the traditions 
of Charlemagne, would continue those of theCsesars and 
the ISTapoleons. 

Let the statesmen of Germany heed this well. If they 
should dare assume, before God and before hietory, the 
responsibility of such a future, it is not France only that 
they would injure ; it is not only Europe. They would 
themselves become the most dangerous enemies of their 
own country ; and I do not believe there can be any mis- 
take in saying that they would set themselves in opposi- 
tion to the real public sentiment of Germany,- — that sen- 
timent which is strengthening day by day among the 
enlightened classes, and which responds to the profoundest 
instincts of the common people. 



19 

I have omitted all mention of Alsace and Lorraine ; 
and I have done it purposely. Tliis question, agitated on 
either side so passionately, is one of tJKjse which seem to 
me of secondary importance. In no respect does it affect 
the substance of the debate ; and the excessive importance 
given to it on the part of Germany as well as on the part 
of France, is one of the most futile, and at the same time 
one of the most active of the causes which have prolonged 
this aimless struggle. Ah ! for my part, I have too high, 
and I am sure, too just an idea of my country to confound, 
at this point, her moral integrity with her material integ- 
rity, or to think that the possession of a couple of pro- 
vinces is so essential to her greatness that losing these she 
would be brought down fr(Dm her present exalted rank. 
Your own history, gentlemen, would re-assure me, if there 
were need. When we recovered Calais, that city which 
you had made (as some one said) " a loaded pistol at the 
heart of France," the event was magnified in your minds 
to the proportions of a public calamity, and your queen 
Mary went down in sorrow to her grave, with that fatal 
name '' written on her heart." But where to-day is 
the Englishman who dreams of lamenting the loss of 
Calais ? Doubtless it would be just the same, by-and-by, 
if Metz and Strasburg should be rent away from us. The 
reason why we so earnestly insist upon our claim to those 
two cities is not so much their strategical importance, as 
the heroic fidelity which the}^ have manifested towards us 
and which we render them in return. Alsace and Lorraine 
desire still to be French. They would show it by their 
vote ; they have declared it by their blood. France owes 
it to them and to herself not to abandon them. 

Further, it is a mistake to say that Germany would 
find the annexation of these two provinces a necessary 



20 

guarantee ao;ainst the recurrence of ao-gression from our 
side. If the new Germanic empire will but be moderate 
as well as powerful, it will have nothing to fear from a 
neighbor that is at once enfeebled and grateful. I believe, 
whatever men may say about it, in such a thing as national 
gratitude ; and I have a very special faith in it in the case 
of my own generous country. The real guarantees which 
Germany ought to look for are in relations of good neigh- 
borhood, in a sincere and lasting alliance with us. Now 
:the best pledge of such an alliance is the maintenance of 
Alsace and Lorraine in our national unity. These pro- 
■vinces, perhaps you will say,' belong to Germany by their 
.history as well as by their language. I freely acknowledge 
it. But they have become penetrated with the spirit of 
IFrance, and they belong to us by the energy and the per- 
sistence of their patriotism. Alsace and Lorraine are the 
natural and vital bond between the two great nations. 
They are the hand, I might almost say the heart of Ger- 
many, resting fraternally in the hand and heart of France. 
Let us take a higher view yet, and as we are speaking 
of races and their antagonism, let us contemplate France 
as the instrument, in the hands of Providence, for their re- 
conciliation. Sprung alike from Rome and from Germany, 
mingling their genius in its language, and their blood in 
its veins, with the genius and blood of the ancient Celts, 
France is a sort of point of contact and union between the 
Latin and the German races. 

God, who rules in history, and who seems, to our appre- 
hension, to be about to give to history its final and con- 
summate expression in this occidental civilization which 
we justly call the Christian civilization, — God has been 
making ready, a great way off, and each apart from the 
other, the two chief elements of which it is made up — 



21 

on the one liand, in those splendid l^nt too often cn.^laved 
and corrupted southern hinds, tlie element of tlie Latin 
races, related, with the Greek races, to a common type : 
on the other hand, in those forests whose history no pen 
has written — -say rather, those forests whose history 
awaited the pen of Tacitus, — the barbarous l)ut purer and 
freer element of the Germanic races. By the splendor of 
their civilization, the strength of their [x.litical <irLi'ani/a- 
tion, the institutions of municipal freedom an<l of the 
Roman law, the Latin races represented more particularly 
the idea of the commonwealth. The German races, on 
the contrary, by that independence of which thev were so 
jealous, those ties of blood which were almost the sole 
bond of union in their tribes, that instinctive and relio-ious 
chastity which saAV in woman a being more than liuman — 
inesse divinum quid, says Tacitus — ^the German races real- 
ized especially the idea of the family. One other race, 
the Jewish, in like seclusion, kept for both these the highei' 
idea of religion When God had summoned this from the 
Eastern hills in the person of the apostles and the earlv 
Christians, when the Gospel had appeared as the healer of 
all divisions, the educator of all barbarisms, the reformer 
of all civilizations, it produced in the world an immense 
and awful collision — thus men always begin ; but the col- 
lision ended, at last, in a mutual and })eaceful embrace, 
and C hristendom hegsiii to be. But God's work is not yet 
finished. Even though united, the North and the South 
are enemies still, and the antagonism of the two worlds con- 
tinues, suppressed sometimes, anon breaking forth again, 
from generation to generation. In the Middle Ages it is 
the Hierarchy and the Empire ; in the Sixteenth Century 
it is the Protestant Reformation, in the Nineteenth, the 



22 

French Pvevolution. It is time for the two worlds to be- 
come one, and for the races of the north and those of the 
south, in full reconciliation, to accomplish the last stages 
of perfect civilization and of the kingdom of God upon 
the earth. 

Men ascribe to the powerful statesman who presides at 
this moment over the destinies of German}'', I had al- 
most said, of Europe, the conviction that the Latin races 
are used up. He is wrong ; they- are only impaired ; and 
it is the part of a humane and far-sighted statesmanship, 
not to attempt their destruction, but to aid in their regene- 
ration. 



IL 



Do you remember, gentlemen, those old legends in 
which, at the moment when two armies are closing in the 
tug of war upon the plain, there appear celestial warriors 
fighting in the clouds above their heads ? Thus it is that 
after having transformed this pending war into a war of 
races, some people have wanted to make it out to be a 
war of religions, and behind these two nations in arms 
have seen two churches struggling for the empire of the 
world, 

I have a distrust of these analogies,- which are rather 
ingenious than substantial, and in the present ease I doubt 
if it is quite just to look upon France and Germany as 
the official champions of the two great forms of Christian- 
ity. Germany is divided almost equally between Pro- 
testantism and Catholicism ; and France, on the other 
hand, represents, by a great part of herself, the most en- 
•ergetic, often the most excessive re-action., not indeed. 



23 

against CatlioHcisin, but against the excesses of the Ro- 
man system. 

However tliis may be, and even if it were true tliat 
the two churches stood confronted together witli the two 
nations, I do not see in this any reason for fighting, but 
only for joining hands. Do you ask why ? Because — 
thank God for it — the time of religious wars is past. It 
is one of the noblest triumphs of the Cliristian spirit, one 
<)f I he most salutary and best established benefits of mod- 
ern civilization, to exclude the sword from the domain of 
religion, — not only the sword of the magistrate, who has 
no right to punish in that domain, but the sword of the 
soldier, who has no mission to conquer there, "He 
that takes the sword shall perish by the sword." This 
word of the Savior is fulfilled most of all in the sphere of 
religion. The sword is impotent against that faitli, true 
or false, which it seeks to destroy. Commonly, it suc- 
ceeds only in reviving, elevating, extending it. Eut it is 
only too potent against the infatuated church which car- 
ries it. It turns against that church, and kills or wounds 
in its bosom the moral principle wdiich constituted its real 
force. 

But it is not only war by fire and sword that has ceased 
between churches : w^ar by word and pen is tending to 
come to an end. Theological controversies still continue, 
l)ut they no longer inflame the passions of the people. 
Religious polemics have preserved, have even aggravated, 
sometimes , their ancient rigidity of gait, their ancient vi- 
olence of procedure ; but they repel, more and more, in every 
communion, truly pious souls, and truly cultivated minds, 

A movement immeasurable, irresistible, is mysteriously 
drawing all the churches towards each other. The strug- 



24 

gles of the extreme parties only prove the resistlessness 
of the current against which they strive to swim. In all 
directions the churches are being forced out of their isola- 
tion and exclusiveness. They find that they have been 
alienated through ignorance of each other rather than by 
hatred ; and they try to know each other better in their 
past as well as in their present. They bring their archives 
together and fairly adjust among themselves their several 
titles to glory and to shame : — for there is no church so 
perfect as not to have its shame, forasmuch as it is of 
man ; there is no church so obscure as not to have its glo- 
ries, forasmuch as it is of God. They estimate the com- 
parative value of the forms under which the gospel doctrine 
has been set forth in one church and another, the devel- 
opments of the Christian life in each. A¥ithal, as in that 
translation of the holy Scriptures which I have seen in 
this country in preparation under the care of ministers 
belonging to all the communions, they seek together, be- 
neath the letter which has so long divided them, the Spirit 
which begins to re-unite them. Verily, it is once more 
fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, " the Lord 
hath created a new thing in the earth ! "* 

It would be a grievous mistake to seek in religious in- 
difference the principle of this wonderful movement. Re- 
ligious indifference is not the characteristic of our age ;— - 
the famous book of M. de Lamennais had only a tempo- 
rary and local truth. Never was a century less indiffe- 
rent than ours. I call to witness the activity of its re- 
ligious inquiries, marked by a depth and sincerity such as 
former ages have not known in the same degree. I call 
to witness its very doubts themselves— earnest, burden- 

*Jerejiiah, xxxi, 33. 



25 

some doubts, witli Avlnch it does not trifle, like Vol- 
taire, but Tvitli which it suffers, and (if I might speak 
of it as embodied in some of its most illustrious represen- 
tatives) of which it dies. Finally, I call to witness its 
faith — a faith Avhich grows stronger, purer, grander, under 
the redoubled blows of criticism and skepticism, and en- 
dows it with strength to live and strength to labor for a 
better time coming ! 

What then is the origin of this novel phenomenon ? 
AVhence comes this drawing nigh of those who had dwelt 
so far asunder — this reconciliation among those who had 
seemed irreconcilable ? I think we must seek the cause 
of it, at least in great part, in a juster apprehension of the 
history and the present condition of Christian society. 
An event has come to pass which seemed impossible to 
ecclesiastical antic|uity, and we ourselves have been very 
long in coming to the comprehension of its nature and con- 
sequences. The visible unity of the Church has been 
broken. By the separation of East and West in the 
tenth century, two great churches were set face to face, 
both of them apostolic, both of them orthodox, both of 
them Catholic, and yet enemies. In the sixteenth century 
came the Protestant Reformation, developing this fact of 
division in new proportions, and, more than this, in a new 
spirit. The primeval synthesis has broken up, in tlie re- 
sult, into a vast and confused analysis. Each of the 
churches whicli then emerged, took itself, more or less, for 
the Church universal ; and claimed to possess an absolute 
right which was wanting to its rivals. Its theology was 
the complete and final statement of the revelation in the 
Scriptures : its organization was the faithful reproduction 
of the apostolic Church. I believe I do no injustice to 



26 

Protestantism in declaring that there was not in all its 
pale a sect so circumscribed but that it shared more or less 
in this strange illusion. Happily this is no longer so. 
Protestant churches are the first to confess that in re- 
spect both to their principle and to their history, such 
positions are not tenable. I am safe in adding that views 
analogous to these are coming to be expressed among the 
most enlightened minds in the Catholic church. Doubt- 
less they maintain, as they justly may, those principles of 
continuity and universality which are the proper character 
of their church ; but they begin to perceive that these prin- 
ciples have not always had their application in the facts. 
The events just transacted at Rome will serve not a little 
to give definiteness and development to these views. Af- 
ter the Council of the Vatican, far more than after that 
of Trent, it will be difficult to help recognizing in the Ro- 
man church neAV elements, defective elements, often, which 
make of it, in certain aspects, a particular church, and 
which no longer permit it, except by a thorough and coura- 
geous reformation, to fulfil its great mission for the unity 
of the world. All the churches are imperfect, and conse- 
quently no one of them is sufficient to itself. All of them, 
in order that they may rise towards the perfect Church, 
have need each of the rest, while they all have need of 
God! 

The movement that is drawing the minds of men to- 
Avard each other, has its origin in regions deeper yet. It 
stands related to a more intimate acquaintance with the 
laws of human thought, and (if I might use the expres- 
sion) Avith the very nature of truth, so far as it is given to 
man to hold the truth upon the earth. Doubtless the 
truth is really contained in the human mind ; but it is 



27 

there like a guest that is greater than the tabernacle of his 
sojourn, like a God more august and holy than his temple. 
Truth cannot be narrowly defined. The most necessary 
and the most certain of all truths, religious truth, is at the 
same time the least susceptible of precise definition. It 
resists all formulas ; it does not suffer itself to be shut up 
in our theological systems nor in our ecclesiastical institu- 
tions, but granting to us no more of itself than that por- 
tion needed by us for the Avants of the journey, suffering 
itself to be seen, as once to Moses and to Elijah, only " by 
the hinder parts," and with a flying glimpse, it draws us 
onward, with our thoughts and doings, towards that higher 
world which is its abode and is to be our own. 

I pray you, understand my meaning well. I do not 
disparage the value of religious forms. Though imperfect, 
they are legitimate, they are useful, they are even neces- 
sary. Without them neither teaching nor fellowship 
would be possible. But I assert that the more deeply we 
enter into the truth and the life, the less we are attached,, 
or at least the less we are chained, to formulas ; and abiding^ 
faithful to the word uttered in our ear, which is the^ 
outward organ of faith, we listen like Saint Paul, to 
those secret inner words which it is permitted every soul 
to hear, which it is forbidden any mouth to repeat — " un- 
speakable words which it is not lawful for man to utter."*' 

Thus it is that there grows up, above all the churches,, 
though not outside of them, a communion of those minds 
and hearts best advanced towards the future, while at the 
same time they are most loyal to the past. To such 
as these, — while they wait for a completer union, for which 
the present is not yet ripe, but which it is theirs only to 

* 2 Coriutliiaus xii, 4. 



28 

desire and prepare for from afar, — that is already fulfilled 
of which the apostle spoke : " the unity of the spirit, in 
the bond of peace." 

It remains for me to point out to you, in the two coun- 
tries which men represent to be the very seat of the 
antagonism of the churches, the providential means of 
religious reconciliation. 

It has been often said that France was Catholic by the 
requirements of its logic and its temperament, at least as 
much as by the traditions of its history, I acknowledge 
it freely, and am proud of it both for my church and for 
my country. But it must not be forgotten that it is this 
same France which through Calvin has given to Protest- 
antism its most original, perhaps its most characteristic 
form, — that form which is unquestionably the most popu- 
lar with the Anglo-Saxon race. It must be remembered, 
also, that Catholic France itself has impressed the mark 
of its own distinctive genius upon its fidelity to the ancient 
Church, and that in respect to religion as well as in respect 
to race, it has long been a temperate zone between the 
south and the north of Europe. In the person of Bossuet 
as well as in that of Grerson, with mingled independence 
and reverence, it has planted against the encroachments of 
the central power the barriers which that power will 
vainly strive to overleap. In the person of Descartes, it 
has opened to free inquiry methods at once bolder and safer 
than those of Luther. And in the admirable school of 
Port Koyal, with the learning of Arnaud, the tenderness 
and purity of Pv^acine, the austere genius of Pascal, it has 
lifted up the immortal protest of the Christian conscience 
against those systems by which, at one stroke, morality is 
corrupted and liberty oppressed. 



29 

I have just been speaking of the protests of conscience. 
It was from one of these — an excessive one, as it seems to 
me, but grand and earnest — that Protestantism came forth. 
Its native land was Germany. '• The German," wrote 
Charles the Fifth to the Pope, who could not understand 
him, " the German is a patient creature who will cari'v 
anvthino; but what weio;hs on his conscience." From the 
burdened conscience of Luther — from his torn and l>urMing 
heart — went forth the cry that woke the world, — that cr}' 
the echo of which disturbs the world to-day. In Ger- 
many, too. Protestantism has had its most complete devel- 
opment in the two directions necessary to every religious 
movement, and which, often opposed to each other in their 
progress, always end in mutual reconciliation — I mean 
science, and devotion. Yes, science in its most advanced 
form, adventurous, astray sometimes, but honest, profound, 
productive, has had its home in those universities, un- 
rivaled, I make bold to say, even in England. iVnd devo- 
tion in its most practical and most touching form , has had 
its sanctuary in the hearts of those educated, simple-hearted 
populations, that rest from their daily toil in peace, to read 
their Bible and their Schiller, and go to battle, as in this 
war, singing the verses of their old psalms under the pines 
of their old forests ! 

But alongside of this Protestantism, to which I have 
wished to render all due honor, Germany has not ceased 
to cherish a Catholicism not less enlightened, not less hon- 
est, not less liberal. It manifested itself in the Council of 
the Vatican by that opposition, triumphant in its appa- 
rent defeat, to which it had given some of its strongest 
supporters. But it is not in any bishop that this Catho- 
licism is personified, but in a simple priest, an old man still 



30 

young in mind and heart under the weight of years and 
experience, a patriarch of German erudition, as it has so 
well been said, but a patriarch of conscience, withal ; one 
who, not less great in character than in intellect, compels 
those to respect who have not learned to love him. I 
have named Ecellinger. 

There is no country, it may be added, in which the two 
communions live together in relations more tolerant, more 
kind, I might almost say, more fraternal. I came myself, 
last spring, upon a most touching picture of this in the 
city of Heidelberg. Side by side in the same temple the 
two rites were celebrated, the Lutheran hymns making 
response to the Latin liturgy, Catholicism and Pro- 
testantism scarce divided by a partition wall. . My heart 
thrilled in my bosom, and I whispered to myself, " the 
hour cometh when in point of Christian faith we shall all 
be Catholic — when against error and unrighteousness, we 
shall all be Protestant. 

Thus have I set before you, gentlemen, this war — 
this war of destiny, as some have called it, — -this 
war into which blind or malignant minds have been 
concentrating w^hatever of hateful passion could be de- 
rived from earth or from above the earth. We have 
found excuse for its existence neither in its earthward 
nor in its heavenward aspect, neither in the political inte- 
rests of the people nor in their religious sentiments, and 
we have reprobated it at once in the name of reason and 
in the name of Christianity. And yet is it to have no 
other result than all this streaming blood, these smoking 
ruins ? Is it to stand in history a hideous inutility ? 
The very thought is an insult to that all-wise and 
all-merciful God whose care is over all his works, who 



^1 

knows liow to bring o-oocl out of evil, and never suffers 
men to introduce into his universe anv disorder whatever, 
except that he himself may derive from it a more perfect 
and more stable order 

Ah, yes ! the providential results of this guilty war 
begin already to rise before my view. Bear with me vet 
a moment, while I bid them welcome, in youi- name as 
well as my own. 

And first, as affecting Germany, the result is the crea- 
tion of a political organism in harmony with her vast in- 
tellectual and moral development. Germany has been 
like a great soul imprisoned in an impotent body. This 
ill-assorted union is ended noAV, and it is because we know 
the soul of Germany, that we are not afraid of what 
course she may pursue in time to come. 

And as for France, gentlemen, it might seem that she 
has gained nothing, but lost everything. Dear, dear, un- 
happy France I As we behold her stretched u|)on her 
own soil, in the convidsions of her heroic agony, we 
might be tempted to repeat, amid our tears, the 
word which was once spoken over another victim 
— "Finis Polonicc !'' No, no! it is not the end, it 
is the beginning ! Out of calamity, beyond all our fears, 
comes forth deliverance beyond all our hopes I Ptescued 
from a government which was bringing us to ruin, but 
which we ourselves had twice sustained by acclamation, 
w^e are going now to shake ourselves free of this alterna- 
tion between dictators and demagogues, between the Con- 
vention and the Empire. We are going to break off from 
the bad traditions of our great Revolution, and to return 
to its legitimate traditions, and fulfil, under the form of 
a conservative republic or a limited monarchy — two 



32 

names for the same thing — those promises so binding 
and yet so long deferred ! 

In that apparent prosperity which for twenty years 
past has covered up so much of servitude and immorality, 
France had become an evil example to other nations, and 
was in a fair way to draw them along with itself to uni- 
versal perdition. It was high time for that scandal to be 
taken out of the way. This was the prayer that was go- 
ing up to heaven from truly patriotic and truly Christian 
hearts. Suffer me here to remind you that I myself was 
more than once the mouth-piece of it. "I will lay 
bare" — I said these words in the pulpit of Notre Dame — 
" I will lay bare those ulcers which are so obstinately con- 
cealed. Yes, while luxury is consuming the nation's vi- 
tals, while amid this increasing dissoluteness the harlots 
lift their shameless heads on every side, like worms upon 
the corpse on which they are battening, there is engen- 
dered another brood of death and corruption that attacks 
not the heart but the brain — the sophists, corrupters at 
once of the public reason and of the language which is its 
instrument. * '^ '^ But hark, now ! — the foe is at our 
gates ! our honor insulted, our independence threatened ! 
If all this must needs be in order to snatch us from the 
hands of those who are our ruin, God will grant us even this, 
because he loves us and is willing to save us in spite of 
ourselves." * 

Well, God has saved us ; and for my part, I do not feel 
that I have the right to reckon with him as to the fearful 
means which he has thought best to use. Thanks be to 
Thee, thou God of mercy and of righteousness ! Thou 

* Notre Dame Conferences, 1867. On War. Discourses of Father 
Hyacinthe, vol. I., p. 104. New York, Putnam & Sons. 



33 

liast given back France to herself. Thou alone couldst 
know what cost of tears, what cost of blood was needed 
for this great redemption ! 

And finally, gentlemen, Rome is free ! This also 
is my country — the countr}- of my soul, and the joy of 
its deliverance breaks in like a ray of happy light upon 
the darkness of this hour. Ah ! I have seen the tempo- 
ral power too close at hand, to share tliese blind regrets 
that follow its departure. I have done my best, if not to 
love, at least to respect it. I thought myself in dutv bound 
to do so. My conscience was stronger than mv judgment. 
The tem}>oral power has had its legitimate, perhaps its ne- 
cessary, place. In the ancient order of things, it had its days 
• 'f prosperity and even of glory. But in its later form, it 
had ceased to be anything but a decrepit system, destined 
to crumble u})on itself, the moment the outward props 
sliould be withdrawn. 

All hail, then, to Roman liberty ! Liberty, I know, is 
only a means, and not an end. It rnay abide without re- 
sult : it may conceive and bring forth death. But I have 
faith in the use Rome will make of libert}'. The libertv 
of Rome is to l:>e the giving back of Italy, also, to herself, 
that she mav be mistress at last of her own o-reat desti- 
nies ! Tlie liberty of Rome is to be the uplifting of the 
Latin races ! The liberty of Rome is to be something 
greater and better than all this : it is to be the Refoi'ma- 
tion of the Church ! 

I append at the close of thi;:: Discourse the whole of that [ex- 
traordinary passage on the moral uses of war, from which these 
fragments are quoted. — Translator. 



APPEI^DIX. 

[referred to on page o3.] 



Extracts from the Discourse on War , in Father Hyacinthe's Notre Dame 
Conferences for 1867, on Christianity and Oicil Society. 

There are hours in the life of nations when peace becomes a peril 
and almost a scourge. Wealth is too often a fatal thing to indivi- 
duals, not because it is an evil, — on the contrary, it is a great good ; 
but joerverse man turns even good into a curse, especially when this 
good smiles upon his passions. Thus divine Wisdom has said, 
■' Blessed are the poor ! How hard is it for a rich man to enter 
the kingdom of heaven ! " Peace, too, is a good yet more excellent, 
and yet when nations abuse it, it may be as fatal to them as wealth 
to the individual. Peace, indeed, develops wealth, and sets it cir- 
culating through the body of society. Then, with wealth, it de- 
velops luxury, in private life as well as public, and especially among 
women, Avith whom it puts on its most seductive and corrupting 
character. And all the time, as in a splendid but infected sepulchre, 
the morals of the people go on decaying in this terrible calm — and 
and with them its understanding perishes also. I have sometimes 
compared the sophist and the harlot ; I must never do it again in 
this pulpit, if I have any regard for rhetoric. But I don't care for 
rhetoric; I am resolved to lay bare the wounds which society so 
obstinately hides. Yes ; while luxury is consuming a nation's vitals, 
while in the midst of increasing dissoluteness the harlots lift their 
shameless heads on every side, like worms upon the corpse on which 
they feed, there rises up another brood of corruption and death, 
which attacks, not the heart, but the brain — the sophists, corrup- 
ters at once of the public reason and the language which is its organ. 
They make their attack in succession on the greatest words of that 
language — liberty, progress, civilization, morality, and even God; 
and in these sacred vessels of spieech, in place of the perfume of 
the truth, they leave a deadly poison. They make it their business 
to pervert all just ideas and supplant them by vague and unreal 
abstractions. Then, amid these phantoms that they are chasing in 



35 

the void, and embmcing in the sweet delusion of a dream, as Or- 
pheus embraced Eurydice at the gates of hell, these demented souls 
keep crying out, " Facts ! facts ! leave theories to the old folks ! 
give us facts and realities ! " 

Facts, forsooth ! Well, here they are ! The enemy at our gates, 
our honor insulted, our independence menaced ! If nothing less 
than this will serve to save us from the toils of those who wouhl 
drag us down to ruin, then God will grant us this, for he loves us 
and will save us from ourselves. Facts ! Here are facts which 
sober us from our intoxication with abstractions, and bring the 
sense of reality — war ! victory or death ! The flag of France torn 
with shot, stained with blood, drooping in glorious tatters, but 
never receding ! The women of France, rising indignant behind 
their husbands and their sons, and driving before the scourge of 
their anger and disgust this rabble-rout of harlots and sophists ! 
Make w-ay there for the Sister of Charity, that comes to tend the 
wounded on the battle-field ! Make way for the Catholic priest, 
till now neglected and despised, sneered at as a man of the past, a 
man of foreign sympathies, when all the time he is the nation's 
own man, for the present and past alike: he is at hand now with 
the consolations of religion, comforting in his arms, cherishing with 
tears and kisses those who are dying with no mother by their side. 
As those days draw nigh, as in the days of Israel's calamity, men 
cry, Peace ! Peace ! But the Lord, perhaps, has said War ! The 
monarchs go about one to another calling each other Brother, and 
then, as if they doubted of it, saying it over again. The people 
do but make echo to their kings. From the coasts of the Atlantic 
to the shores of the Mediterranean, interests in cotilition protest 
against war, now by the dull silence of business, now by the noisy 
complaints of working-men. The talking men and the writing 
men come to the support of business interests in the name of ideas, 
and once more the whole world is crying Peace ! And yet, as un- 
der some overhanging storm, we seem to feel the thunder in the 
air, so the people vaguely perceive in their atmosphere that terrible 
gathering of electricity which Jesus Christ has spoken of as " ru- 
mors of wars." 

Son of Bethlehem I Father of the Age to come ! Prince of peace ! 
grant us that peace which is peace indeed ! Scatter these rumors 
of w^ar, save each nation by itself, regenerate France by her own 
children ! So grand she is, even yet; so peaceful and so prosper- 
ous she micrht be, if onlv left to her own true instincts 1 



36 

But if it is too late — great God, if, in thy wisdom, thou hast oth- 
erwise decided, then bring back to us, upon the battle-field, that 
faith which on the battle-field we first received ; that faith of Tol- 
biac which made us great, but which it is sought to ravish from us. 
Pour out in war the blood of our young men, too precious to dry 
up in sterility, or be corrupted in the pleasures of an unworthy 
peace. Leap from the scabbard, thou sword of the Lord and of 
France, gladius Domini ei Gcdeonis, and do thy work ! Do it sj)eed- 
ily, and do it to the end ! 

And then, " thou sword of the Lord, put up thyself into thy 
scabbard, rest, and be still !"* 

*Jeremiali, xlvii. 6. 






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